Spike Lee: “Django Unchained” Disrespectful to Black Heritage

Quentin Tarantino’s slavery revenge film, “Django Unchained,” has been critically acclaimed and garnered three Golden Globe nominations. But not everyone is so enamored.

Famed Black director Spike Lee has called the Civil War-era Western “disrespectful” and said he will not go to see it.

“I can’t speak on it ‘cause I'm not gonna see it,” he told VIBETV in a recent interview. “All I’m going to say is that it’s disrespectful to my ancestors. That’s just me…I’m not speaking on behalf of anybody else.”

Lee recently completed work on a new film, “Red Hook Summer,” which deals with race and class in a South Brooklyn neighborhood. He elaborated on his distaste for “Django” on Twitter.

“American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western,” he wrote on Dec. 22. “It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them.”

“Django” star Jamie Foxx said Lee had told him he wouldn’t make any negative comments on the film.

“I ran into Spike Lee at the BET Awards,” Foxx said in a separate Vibe magazine interview. “You know Spike, he’ll let you have it whether it’s good, bad or ugly. And he said, ‘I’m not going to say anything bad about this film. It looks like y’all are getting it.’”

This is not the first time Lee has spoken out against a Tarantino film. The “Crooklyn” and “Do the Right Thing” director previously took issue with Tarantino’s gratuitous use of the N-word, present in “Django” and 1997’s “Jackie Brown.”